An Environment for the Red Menace
Catalyst Game Labs has actually done Battletech players a real favor – everything you need to play the Scouring Sands campaign is contained in the Alpha Strike box and the Scouring Sands box.
The Red Menace Mercenary Cooperative is ready for the campaign, so the only thing left to do is prepare everything else. Catalyst Game Labs has actually done Battletech players a real favor – everything you need to play the Scouring Sands campaign is contained in the Alpha Strike box and the Scouring Sands box. Now, I understand that $130.00* is not a small sum, it is a great deal less than one would typically spend to get everything you need for a war game, including the rules. Importantly, the Scouring Sands campaign, which has maps included for the scenarios, assumes that the player only has access to these two boxes.
One thing that these boxes do not include is a mat or a board. I really like having a mat for my games, but I do not have an appropriate 4’ x 4’ mat. Also, I do not, right now, have an extra $50 for a felt mat or $75+ for a neoprene/vinyl mat, so I had to make do with current resources. Luckily, my resources include a wonderful printer that prints margin-less on ledger paper (11” x 17”). So, I purchased a map on drivethrurpg that had a Martian desert feel. It is available here, from Loke BattleMaps. I printed it out with a three-quarter-inch overlap and used a glue stick to put it together. It is not perfect, but for five dollars (for the JPEG, 15 sheets of paper, and some ink from my subscription), it looks good, even under a sheet of plastic. Our mat is done, but now we need something to put on the map.
Luckily, we have the card pieces from the Alpha Strike box, which is pictured below. These may not be the most beautiful, but they are solid buildings, hills, and trees. The red hills are in the straight slope/cliff version that Battletech uses for its abstracted level rules, and are not my favorite, but I will still be using them. Also, they are reddish and inspired my battle mat choice. The buildings are solid, square paper buildings, although the art is a little large, but Battletech has always been a little squishy on its scaling. Finally, the trees, which are probably the best part of the terrain, so of course, my petty self will not be using them, but there is one in the photograph.
The Scouring Suns box does not give us a lot more terrain, but it includes some double-sided pieces. The pieces are rivers on one side and gullies or possibly roads on the other side. In addition, there is the cool card bridge. These pieces are actually sturdier than the buildings and hills in the Alpha Strike box. Scouring Suns also has a variety of tokens for infantry, vehicles, and buildings, which is good because the official Clan Elemental box from Catalyst Game Labs is out of print and very expensive.
Finally, let me rant a bit about trees in science fiction war gaming. An entire universe of possible weirdness, and all we get are normal green trees that could be from Earth. You could go wild with multi-colored hedges (chlorophyll? How about ferric light processing?), tentacle plants, or even methane-emitting plants with burning limbs. So, I did not go quite that far, but I did take a bunch of 3-D printed cacti that had gone horribly wrong. I painted them purple and used the resin seepage as a black fungus. Adding a slight yellow dry-brush allows me to create a reddish alien desert cactus.
The Alpha Strike guidelines use trees to mark the corners of forested polygons and end points for tree lines. This is a great way of getting started, but I prefer more distinguishable edges on my forests. I added a bit of flocking to some felt to mark the area of forests. Because of my desert terrain, I had a bit more leeway to use red and black felt for these edges. I have not cut the felt yet, but in the picture below, you can see my cacti, my felt forests, my Jade Falcon opposition force from the Scouring Sands box, and some elemental infantry I printed out.
Well, now I am ready, and expect an Action After Report in the coming weeks.
**A note on resources used, for the backdrop of many of my photos, I used a Photo by Toni Tan. If you are wondering where the box sets for Scouring Sands and Alpha Strike can be found for under $130, may I recommend Atomic Empire, who have not endorsed this site, paid me for any endorsements, or even know I am referring you. Atomic Empire is a great Durham, North Carolina business alternative to Amazon, and allows me to run TTRPGs for kids.